Latest imported feed items on East Coast Liberal Elite2020-06-06T23:30:40ZThe civil unrest north of the border has transfixed many in Mexico. Hundreds have gathered in sympathy outside the U.S. Embassy in recent days.
]]>2020-06-06T21:55:17ZUnique in its Midwestern, progressive, post-industrial personality, Minneapolis is beginning to grapple with its racial injustices past and present.
]]>2020-06-06T18:48:14Z

(COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France) — At daybreak on Saturday, Charles Shay stood lonesome without any fellow veterans on the very same beach where he waded ashore 76 years ago, part of one of the most epic battles in military historic that came to be known as D-Day and turned the tide of World War II.

Compared to last year, when many tens of thousands came to the northern French beaches of Normandy to cheer the dwindling number of veterans and celebrate three-quarters of a century of liberation from Nazi oppression, the coronavirus lockdown turned this year’s remembrance into one of the eeriest ever.

“I am very sad now,” said Shay, who was a 19-year-old U.S. Army medic when he landed on Omaha Beach under horrific machine-gun fire and shells. “Because of the virus, nobody can be here. I would like to see more of us here,” he told The Associated Press.

Normally, 95-year-old Shay would be meeting other survivors of the 1944 battle and celebrating with locals and dignitaries alike, all not far from his home close to the beaches that defined his life.

“This year, I am one of the very few that is probably here,” he said, adding that other U.S. veterans could not fly in because of the pandemic.

When a full moon disappeared over land and the sun rose the other side over the English Channel, there was no customary rumble of columns of vintage jeep and trucks to be heard, roads still so deserted hare sat alongside them.

Still the French would not let this day slip by unnoticed, such is their attachment to some 160,000 soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada and other countries who spilled their blood to free foreign beaches and fight on to finally defeat Nazism almost one year later.

“It’s a June 6 unlike any other,” said Philippe Laillier, the mayor of Saint-Laurent-Sur-Mer, who staged a small remembrance around the Omaha Beach monument. “But still we had to do something. We had to mark it.”

The moment the sun broke over the ocean, the Omaha Beach theme from the film “Saving Private Ryan” blared across the sand for a few dozen locals and visitors dressed in vintage clothing.

The pandemic has wreaked havoc across the world, infecting 6.6 million people, killing over 391,000 and devastating economies. It poses a particular threat to the elderly — like the surviving D-Day veterans who are in their late nineties or older.

It has also affected the younger generations who turn out every year to mark the occasion. Most have been barred from traveling to the windswept coasts of Normandy.

The lack of a big international crowd was palpable.

In the afternoon, a flyover of French fighter jets leaving a trail of the national colors was reminiscent of the one U.S. President Donald Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron watched from Colleville last year. This time, though, only a sparse crowd craned necks upward.

At the American cemetery on a bluff overseeing Omaha Beach, Shay went to pay his respects to over 9,000 servicemen, and again was the lone U.S. veteran at an intimate ceremony.

President Harry Truman’s quote, “America will never forget their sacrifices,” is etched into the cemetery’s Orientation Pavilion.

With Americans unable to come over to Normandy this year, the French proved to be trustworthy alternates in fulfilling Truman’s vow.

Ivan Thierry, 62, a local fisherman who catches sea bass around the wrecks that still litter the seabed nearby, was holding an American flag in tribute even before dawn.

“There is not nobody here. Even if we are only a dozen, we are here to commemorate,” he said.

]]>2020-06-06T16:45:15Z

(BERLIN) — Thousands of people rallied in Australia and Europe to honor George Floyd and to voice support Saturday for what is becoming an international Black Lives Matter movement, as a worldwide wave of solidarity with protests over the death of a black man in Minneapolis highlights racial discrimination outside the United States.

Demonstrators in Paris tried to gather in front of the U.S. Embassy in Paris, defying restrictions imposed by authorities because of the coronavirus pandemic. They were met by riot police who turned people on their way to the embassy, which French security forces sealed off behind an imposing ring of metal barriers and road blocks.

“You can fine me 10,000 or 20,000 times, the revolt will happen anyway,” Egountchi Behanzin, a founder of the Black African Defense League, told officers who stopped him to check his ID documents before he got close to the diplomatic building. “It is because of you that we are here.”

Pamela Carper, who joined an afternoon protest at London’s Parliament Square that headed towards the U.K. Home Office, which oversees the country’s police, said she was demonstrating to show “solidarity for the people of America who have suffered for too long.”

The British government urged people not to gather in large numbers and police have warned that mass demonstrations could be unlawful. In England, for example, gatherings of more than six people are not permitted.

Carper said the coronavirus had “no relevance” to her attendance and noted that she had a mask on.

“I am showing the government that I am heeding to their rules and everybody is staying away,” Carper said. “But I need to be here because the government is the problem. The government needs to change.”

In Sydney, protesters won a last-minute appeal against a Friday ruling declaring their rally unauthorized. The New South Wales Court of Appeal gave the green light just 12 minutes before the rally was scheduled to start, meaning those taking part could not be arrested.

Up to 1,000 protesters had already gathered in the Town Hall area of downtown Sydney ahead of the decision.

Floyd, a black man, died in handcuffs on May 25 while a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee on his neck even after he pleaded for air and stopped moving.

His death has struck a chord with minorities protesting discrimination elsewhere, including deaths of indigenous Australians in custody.

In Sydney, there was one early scuffle when police removed a man who appeared to be a counter protester carrying a sign reading, “White Lives, Black Lives, All Lives Matter.”

The rally appeared orderly as police handed out masks to protesters and other officials provided hand sanitizer.

“If we don’t die from the (coronavirus) pandemic, then we will die from police brutality,” Sadique, who has a West African background and said he goes by only one name, said in Sydney.

Bob Jones, 75, said it was worth the risk to rally for change despite the state’s chief health officer saying the event could help spread the coronavirus.

“If a society is not worth preserving, then what are you doing? You’re perpetuating a nonsense,” Jones said.

In Brisbane, the Queensland state capital, organizers said about 30,000 people gathered, forcing police to shut down some major downtown streets. The protesters demanded to have Australia’s Indigenous flag raised at the police station.

“Whether you’re talking about the U.S. or right here in Australia, black lives matter,” she said. “Black lives matter today. Black lives matter every day.”

Indigenous Australians make up 2% of the the country’s adult population, but 27% of the prison population. They are also the most disadvantaged ethnic minority in Australia and have higher-than-average rates of infant mortality and poor health, as well as shorter life expectancies and lower levels of education and employment than other Australians.

In South Korea’s capital, Seoul, protesters gathered for a second straight day to denounce Floyd’s death.

Wearing masks and black shirts, dozens of demonstrators marched through a commercial district amid a police escort, carrying signs such as “George Floyd Rest in Peace” and “Koreans for Black Lives Matter.”

“I urge the U.S. government to stop the violent suppression of (U.S.) protesters and listen to their voices,” said Jihoon Shim, one of the rally’s organizers. “I also want to urge the South Korean government to show its support for their fight (against racism).”

In Tokyo, dozens of people gathered in a peaceful protest.

“Even if we are far apart, we learn of everything instantly on social media,”

“Can we really dismiss it all as irrelevant?” Taichi Hirano, one of the organizers, shouted to the crowd gathered outside Tokyo’s Shibuya train station. He stressed that Japanese are joining others raising their voices against what he called “systematic discrimination.”

In Berlin, thousands of mostly young people, many dressed in black and wearing face masks, joined a Black Lives Matter protest in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, or Alexander Square, on Saturday.

Some held up placards with slogans such as “Be the change,” I can’t breath” and “Germany is not innocent.”

___

Rycroft reported from Sydney. Associated Press journalists Dennis Passa and John Pye in Brisbane, Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, John Leicester in Paris, Pan Pylas in London and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.

]]>2020-06-06T16:21:01Z

When Syrian painter Aziz Asmar saw the video showing the dying moments of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the violence felt close to home even if it happened 6,000 miles away. To Asmar, the handcuffed, unarmed black man pleading that he couldn’t breathe as a white police officer knelt on his neck, resurfaced painful memories of what he and other Syrians witnessed three years ago after dictator Bashar al Assad attacked civilians with sarin gas in the suburb of Eastern Ghouta.

“In those hospitals, the victims were crying and they were asking to breathe,” Asmar tells TIME via an interpreter, from the town of Binnish in northwest Syria. “I saw George Floyd pleading with the officer to let him breathe and it reminded me of the way they were killed.”

Asmar, who runs art workshops for children in Idlib, Syria’s last rebel-held enclave, expressed his pain the best way he knew. On the remnants of what he says was a family’s kitchen before regime airstrikes ripped through the building, Asmar and two friends painted an eight-foot-high mural to show solidarity with those grieving in the United States. It features Floyd’s face, appended with the words: “I can’t breathe.”

Those words have become a constant refrain at protests across the U.S., where many demonstrators see the killing of Floyd as emblematic of police brutality and systematic racism. At parallel rallies in Paris, London, Berlin and elsewhere, protesters have expressed solidarity with victims of police brutality in America, while calling attention to racism in their own countries. Floyd’s last words have also inspired myriad expressions of art, from the painting by artist Titus Kapher that appears on the cover of this week’s TIME magazine, to the graffiti featuring Floyd’s face on walls as far afield as Kenya, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Northern Ireland. In Syria, where the vivid colors of Asmar’s mural contrast the sun-bleached rubble and twisted rebar of devastated homes, the work seems especially poignant.

“Syrians, especially in Idlib, have a history of showing solidarity with injustices around the world,” says Raja Althaibani, who directs the Middle East and North Africa program at human rights organization Witness. Established after VHS footage of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King alerted many to systemic racism in the U.S., Witness trains citizen journalists in America, Syria and other countries to safely document war crimes and human rights violations. That Syrians like Asmar are raising their voices in support of injustice in the U.S., says Althaibani, “sends a powerful message to a world that has largely neglected Syria.”

A decade ago, Idlib would have seemed a strange place for the Syrian revolution’s last stand. A mainly rural province known for its olive groves and wheat fields, some of Idlib’s towns and villages were among the first to protest against the Assad regime in 2011, But uprisings across the country soon forced the dictator to divert his security forces to major urban centers, leaving Idlib a comparative bastion of freedom.

Today, it is the last major rebel-held territory in Syria. Although increasingly squeezed by jihadist groups and Assad’s Russia-backed advance, Idlib’s relative freedom has fomented a vibrant art and music culture. For Asmar, that culture has been integral to asserting the humanity of the province’s 3 million people and countering Russian and regime propaganda.

“We’re trying to show that despite being bombed and losing people, and then being called terrorists, we still feel empathy. We still feel for people like George Floyd, who are being oppressed in other parts of the world,” he says.

It’s not the first mural he’s painted. An earlier work depicts journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018 by a hit squad inside Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Istanbul. More recent work encourages people in Idlib to stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. “As activists, and as artists, we want to make it clear that we’re civilians, we denounce violence and we have a right to live with dignity,” he says.

Since the war began in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, more than 5 million have fled the country, and more than 6 million have been displaced in the country.

Not all of the artwork referencing Black Lives Matter has garnered an unequivocally positive response from activists. When Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, had city workers paint “Black Lives Matter” in giant yellow letters on one of the main thoroughfares in the nation’s capital, some regarded it as a powerful message of support blocks away from a White House critics say has stoked division in America. But Black Lives Matter’s D.C. chapter, which is calling for police to be defunded, described the street painting as a “performative distraction from real policy changes” designed to “appease white liberals.”

Comparisons between oppression in the U.S. and in other countries, can also draw complex responses. After Floyd’s killing, Jordan-based Palestinian artist Lina Abojaradeh produced a work showing a police officer’s leg inscribed with the words “white supremacy” kneeling on the necks of a black man, an indigenous American woman and a Palestinian. Two days after she shared the drawing on social media, Israeli police shot dead an unarmed Palestinian named Iyad Halak. Halak, who was autistic, was reportedly on his way to a Jerusalem school for students with special needs.

In an interview with UAE newspaperThe National, Abojaradeh said that although her work had generally been well-received, some had criticized it for drawing parallels they claimed belittle the suffering of Palestinians living under occupation. But in both cases, the oppression is rooted in white supremacy and colonialism, Abojaradeh told TheNational, and “standing up for one type of injustice is also standing up for every type of injustice.”

Asmar too, says there are important differences between the experience of black people in America and the experience of Syrians in Idlib, but he wants to oppose oppression and show solidarity with the oppressed.

It’s a solidarity that isn’t always reciprocated. Although Russia and Turkey, which backs some of Idlib’s rebel groups, agreed to a fragile ceasefire in March, Asmar says that from his home in Binnish he can see fields on fire after being hit by airstrikes. When those airstrikes target crowded markets or hospitals, “the world is silent and we don’t understand why,” he tells TIME. “What about the futures of our children? Don’t you think they also have rights?”

]]>2020-06-06T01:58:11Z“Black lives matter. This isn’t a controversial statement,” said the NBA legend.
]]>2020-06-06T00:37:08ZTrump defended Brees’s remarks on the national anthem protests, even after Brees apologized and vowed to be an ally to the Black community.
]]>2020-06-05T22:50:08ZThe coronavirus outbreak is affecting everyone in America, but it is not affecting everyone equally. Here’s what we can do about COVID-19’s racial inequality.
]]>2020-06-05T22:40:55ZBilly Porter, Janet Mock and Megan Thee Stallion were among those to defend Iyanna Dior, who was allegedly beaten after a Minnesota protest.
]]>2020-06-05T22:23:12ZClaims that “defunding the police” will harm women ignore dire problems in policing gender-based crimes today.
]]>2020-06-05T21:14:39ZBut views about policing remain divided along partisan and racial lines, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds.
]]>2020-06-05T19:57:56ZPriyanka Chopra showed support for Black Lives Matter but has been called out for failing to speak out against injustice in India.
]]>2020-06-05T17:19:19Z

When I first saw the news about George Floyd, it was a thumbnail with a summary describing a police officer kneeling on a man’s neck. I chose not to pursue that news item. I didn’t want to think about where it would take me, because I knew I would be confronted by my own helplessness. That feeling has become familiar, linked to a particular pattern of violence in which the common denominator is the color of our skin.

These events hold deep resonance in the U.K. It’s very hard as Black Britons to keep our story on the forefront of the national agenda. And as conflicting as it is, the attention and outrage that is felt around African American injustices is useful to us in explaining what we are going through here.

This moment presents us with opportunities. It is a time in which we are reminded that we have common problems, and despite the distance and diversity between us as Black people, we have to find common approaches to solving those problems. It has recently dawned on me that much of white Britain doesn’t culturally identify with white America in the way that Black Britain often does with Black America. It’s therefore understandable—though not excusable—that so many of our white compatriots struggle when their society is shamed for producing similar racist outcomes to the U.S. The entrenchment of racist ideology across the West is not part of our compulsory education. White people often find themselves bewilderingly late to the conversation, and revert to a defensive stance. But come on. Over here, Black men have double the unemployment rate of white men, Black children are four times more likely to be arrested than white children and Black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Blackness and whiteness occupy different areas of modern society. There is, of course, a flipside to this; our artistic tradition also holds its own unique place in the world.

Not by consensus nor intention, but by default, we are a political bloc confronted with social and economic disadvantages that show up everywhere, irrespective of our individual lifestyles. African Americans have a fraction of the wealth of white Americans. A report in 2017 showed that 40% of Black households in the U.K. are living in poverty. This is not something we’ve coordinated, and it’s not a coincidence. What we have in common that drives our economic conditions is a shared history of exploitation, interference, sabotage and abuse at the hands of white societies. All of that comes rushing back when I see Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck.

I grew up in one of the blackest parts of the U.K. St Raphael’s Estate, my neighbourhood in North West London, is 46% Black, while the U.K. has a population that is 3% Black. The first thing you know is your family, then you know your street, then pretty quickly you know the world. The messages you receive about this world travel through the media, and those stories will plug you in to a broader narrative of what your dark skin means. My mum used music, and she played me Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier when I was too young to know how old I was. She used each line to explain the transatlantic slave trade. Over the years, as my consciousness took shape, I listened to more rap music and heard things that aligned with the reality I was living in. Eventually, studying Sociology at school and then university taught me how to frame the common narratives of rap music academically. Two books that do this expertly are: Nativesby (actual rapper) Akala and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

For Black people, our position in the economy is preventing us from building momentum against the effects of racism. Career is how we all make money, and therefore dictates our time. If our attention is dispersed across the economy in a way that does not reflect our common history, then we are unable to unify our energy against the problem in an organized, sustainable manner. What we need is an understanding across the economy, between Black people, that we are committing to strengthening our response to racism. I’m talking about a plan on a scale we haven’t seen in our lifetime. It’s ambitious, but we now have the technology and more importantly the historical lessons to redesign our freedom strategy. This is not going to happen overnight, but in the arts and entertainment industry, this is very much underway.

To plan an economic route for Black children, we’d need a strong starting point; one that sensitively acknowledges the past but offers a truly blank canvas for the future. Through arts and entertainment, Black people have refined this approach for a century. From Jazz to Ska to Hip Hop to Grime to Afrobeats, our musical innovations have passionately explained our journey, giving insight into our distinct intellectual brilliance, winning over the hearts and minds of onlookers worldwide, and most importantly, introducing wealth into communities that were at best overlooked, at worst brutalised by their governments. We have something here. 2019 saw a 19% rise in the use of stop and search among London’s black population. That same year, sales of UK rap singles rose by 20.9% – driven largely by London’s black youth.

People often bemoan the stereotype of Black public figures falling into the sports and entertainment categories. It is a trope that carries connotations of inferior intelligence – but where did that association come from? Who, at some point in their lives, hasn’t viewed sporting and artistic excellence as the perfect distillation of human potential? Furthermore, who says we can’t build our presence in other professions around this foothold? Your favourite artist has a legal team. Your favourite athlete has a medical team.

We all have a part to play in reversing the effects of racism, but I would argue that no industry has had a greater influence on race politics than entertainment. The unique advantage that we have in the arts is the focus on our story; in this space, our economic activity is tied to the social needs of our community. Do we need more rappers? We need the wealth rap generates, and the discursive space it creates. We don’t have a combination like that anywhere else in the economy. Do we need more athletes? We need to capitalize on the respect they command, and apply it beyond the sale of products that have nothing to do with our struggle. Our focus should not be on convincing white people to work and think in a different way, as great as that would be. Instead, we should concentrate on playing to our strengths and reinvesting our diverse skill set into the political bloc we find ourselves in by default. Black excellence is not just a hashtag: it’s an economic lifeline.

]]>2020-06-05T15:56:51Z

The United States is alight with the flame of revolution. Like wildfire, it spreads, and it has been a long time coming. But revolution is borderless, and racism is not solely an American problem.

Though the murder of George Floyd at the knee of police was the most recent spark, the fuel has been pouring for decades. Widespread police brutality in an environment of racialized poverty and inequality have led Black people in the United States to feel there is no option but to overwhelm the streets. Years of peaceful protest and court proceedings brought neither change, nor justice. And so, uprisings; the ferocious cry of the unheard.

Outside the United States, solidarity protests have sprung up in Australia, Britain, Germany, France and beyond. Some have struggled to understand why, blithely suggesting that these protests are due to the United States’ cultural hegemony. But as someone who grew up in Australia, lives in the United Kingdom and travels often to work in the United States, it’s clear to me that the reason lies closer to home.

The structural racism underlying police brutality in the United States thrives globally, including in Australia and Britain. In England and Wales, young Black people are nine times more likely to be locked up than their white peers and in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders account for 28% of the prison population, despite only making up 3.3% of the total Australian population. The statistics are devastating in their conclusion: Britain and Australia disproportionally kill and incarcerate Black and Indigenous people. For those whose bodies are not directly violated, equity of opportunity is still a long way off. The system of white supremacy is alive and well.

This “selective amnesia” conveniently extends back centuries, eliding over the fact that the British Empire was effectively responsible for the concept of race and racism. The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 marked the beginning of the legal codification of slavery, establishing the concept of “Black” and “white” races and the racial hierarchy between them. Enslaved people who were Black were deemed “slaves,” property into perpetuity, whereas white people (Irish, English, Scottish) would be labeled ‘indentured servants’, properly only for the length of their contract. As Barbados was the first English colony to create a set of slavery laws, these laws created the foundation ideology for white supremacy that continues to smother Black lives and dreams today.

Not only are the British often quick to deny their links to the origins of racism and forget their role in pioneering the transatlantic slave trade, they also ignore how they built an entire nation based on the concept of ‘whiteness’ they so treasured. Australia, the country I grew up in, was that very project. When James Cook declared it “nobody’s land” (Terra Nullius) in 1770, he erased 65,000 years of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inhabitancy. This meant no obligation to get consent to settle, and the freedom to murder Indigenous people with impunity. Those who survived were declared subjects of the British Crown and forcibly “assimilated.” Whiteness continued to be the nation’s aspiration, furthered by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, a bill that introduced the “White Australia Policy,” forbidding non-European migration. The policy was only officially dismantled by 1973.

Australia has never formally acknowledged its racist and genocidal history, and so unsurprisingly, the amnesia persists. “When I see things like George Floyd, I’m just very thankful for the wonderful country we live in,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said earlier this week, warning against important overseas divisions to Australia while hundreds of protesters gathered in Sydney. He conveniently forgets that the very existence of his “wonderful country” is contingent on the violent and enduring oppression of Aboriginal people. Too many Australians prefer to live in wilful denial rather than face the brutal specter of their history.

The British are able to deny their racist history because the worst occurred not on English soil, but in the colonies. They sought to offshore their racist brutality, attempting to buy themselves a semblance of plausible deniability. Out of sight, out of mind. But racism has a long history on British soil too. From Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, to racism in schools and sport and politics, there is no version of Britain that has existed without it.

There have been countless sparks. Why did this one catch? Why was George Floyd’s murder the one to light the fire of sustained protests in the U.K. and Australia, rather than Mark Duggan or David Dungay Jr? Why now?

I find myself unable to answer. This has long been the lived reality of Black and Indigenous peoples. I’ve traveled to over 20 countries educating companies and leaders on inclusion, bias and tackling structural inequality, but have often been frustrated by the lack of genuine and sustainable change. People seem willing to accept they might have racial “unconscious bias,” a sanitized way of saying “internalised racism.” but balk at doing the unlearning, tackling structural change, committing to anti-racism.

Perhaps that is what’s changing — or at least, I hope so. These uprisings do not appear in a vacuum. They come on the heels of a devastating global pandemic, a phenomenon that has demonstrated with crystal clarity, the failure of states to fully protect their citizens, especially those from Black communities. After months of economically and socially devastating lockdown, there is not only undeniable evidence of systemic inequality. There is also the time and space for people to grapple with the reality of structural racism. In lockdown, there is nowhere else to go, and nothing else to look at.

This is not an awakening for Black people, who have known this reality since we were classified ‘Black’. This is a moment of awakening for white people, non-Black people, non-Indigenous people. People who have, through the experience of the pandemic, some perhaps for the first time an understanding of what it means to be at the mercy of a “system.” Who now have no excuse for not doing the work they have to do.

What has always been needed is systemic change. Systems and institutions need to become anti-racist. And here’s the thing: institutions are made up of people, like you. Systemic change begins with you. It is incumbent on you, reader, to commit to anti-racism, in yourself, your work, your daily practice. The policies and reforms that are required for transformative change need a critical mass of support. To dismantle the system of white supremacy that has killed us and erased our humanity for centuries, we need you to commit to being anti-racist.

Commit to examining your own anti-Blackness and internalised white supremacy. Commit to voting for anti-racist politicians. Commit to actively hiring more Black people and paying them well and giving them the space to make mistakes. Commit to educating yourself on the racial history of your nation. Commit to educating those around you and holding your non-Black friends and colleagues accountable. Consider your anti-racism work a muscle that will atrophy if not exercised. Commit to improving and maintaining your anti-racism ‘fitness’.

Commit to doing the work, so we don’t have to be here again. And commit to doing it long term, even once the headlines have moved on. Remember the privilege in the choice to learn about racism, rather than live it. I will still be Black after it stops trending — and my life should still matter then.

— With reporting by Suyin Haynes

]]>2020-06-05T14:58:52Z

(BRUSSELS) — Europe could have its free travel zone up and running again by the end of this month, but travelers from further afield will not be allowed in before July, a European Union commissioner said Friday after talks among the bloc’s interior ministers.

Panicked by Italy’s coronavirus outbreak in February, countries in the 26-nation Schengen travel zone — where people and goods move freely without border checks — imposed border restrictions without consulting their neighbors to try to keep the disease out. The moves caused massive border traffic jams and blocked medical equipment.

Free movement is a jewel in Europe’s crown that helps its businesses flourish and many European officials feared that the very future of the Schengen area was under threat from coronavirus travel restrictions. These added to border pressures already caused by the arrival in Europe of well over 1 million migrants in 2015.

“I personally believe that we will return to a full functioning of the Schengen area and freedom of movement of citizens no later than the end of the month of June,” European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said Friday after the video-conference meeting.

All but essential travel into Europe from the outside is restricted until June 15, but many ministers suggested Friday that they want this deadline extended until early July.

The meeting came as the Czech Republic was easing restrictions with some of its neighbors; Austria, Germany and Hungary. Also Friday, Switzerland said it plans to lift restrictions on travel from EU nations and Britain on June 15. Switzerland is not an EU member but is part of the Schengen travel zone.

Johansson said Europe’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control believes that confinement, social distancing and other health measures are working. More than 175,000 people have died in Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, mostly in Britain, Italy, France and Spain.

“Physical distancing and other health-related measures are still needed, of course. But health authorities are clear that there is no longer a clear justification for either travel restrictions or border measures within the EU Schengen area,” Johansson said.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, whose country plans to lift its remaining border checks on June 15 like many other EU countries, said “the internal border controls will be over in all of Europe at the end of June.”

The news should come as a relief to millions of Europeans still trying to work out their summer vacation plans — which begin for many in July once the school year is over — and who are anxious to know whether they will be allowed to head to the continent’s beaches or mountains.

It’s also good news for European countries whose economies have been ravaged by the spread of COVID-19 and are hoping for a much-needed boost from their decimated tourism industries.

But the perception that Italy is still dangerous is weighing heavily on its tourism sector, which along with related industries accounts for 13% of Italy’s gross domestic product.

In an apparent reference to Austria and Greece, which have not fully opened to Italian tourists, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio denounced the “ad hoc” measures put in place by some countries as “a violation of the European spirit that has always distinguished us.”

Di Maio said Rome would provide regular infection data to Austria “so they can have certainty about Italy’s numbers.” Last week, he said Italy refused to be treated as a leper after Greece announced a list of 29 countries whose citizens could visit without testing or quarantine requirements, but excluded Italians, Britons and residents of other hard-hit countries.

Germany’s Seehofer said most of the EU’s interior ministers want to extend the current entry ban on outside travelers “by 14 days until July 1.”

Visitors from the United States, Russia or Brazil, for example, would only be allowed back into Europe on based on how those nations have brought the spread of the virus under control, he said. Those three nations account for 44% of the world’s confirmed infections and nearly 38% of the world’s confirmed coronavirus deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

Worldwide, 6.6 million people have been confirmed infected by the virus and over 391,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins, but experts say the tally understates the true toll of the pandemic due to limited testing, missed mild cases and deliberate government undercounts.

___

Janicek reported from Prague. Geir Moulson in Berlin and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

]]>2020-06-05T09:25:18Z

(BANGKOK) — A Thai dissident has been abducted in Cambodia, a human rights group said Friday, raising concern that a mysterious campaign targeting exiles for disappearance or death may have been revived.

Armed men snatched Wanchalearm Satsaksit off the street in front of his apartment in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh late Thursday afternoon, Human Rights Watch said Friday, citing witnesses and a security video at the building. He was then bundled into a black car that drove away.

Cambodia denied any abduction had taken place and said no investigation was planned.

An arrest warrant issued in 2018 alleged Wanchalearm violated the Computer Crime Act by operating a Facebook page from Phnom Penh critical of the Thai government, the rights group said.

“At that time, senior Thai police officers vowed to bring Wanchalearm back to Thailand one way or another,” its statement said.

Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, an activist from the same political circle who spent seven years in prison for the crime of insulting the monarchy, gave The Associated Press a secondhand account of Thursday’s incident.

Somyot said Wanchalearm was talking on his phone and walking to buy snacks at a nearby mini-mart when he was abducted. The other person on the phone call “heard noises, a commotion,” men speaking possibly in a foreign language and Wanchalearm saying he couldn’t breathe, according to Somyot, who heard the account from the second person on the phone call.

She said a friend of Wanchalearm saw security camera footage of armed men taking Wanchalearm into a black car.

At least eight Thai exiles were abducted in Laos in 2016-2018, and the bodies of several were later found floating in the Mekong River.

Those disappearances raised suspicions they had been kidnapped by a death squad, either vigilantes or officially sanctioned.

The victims were associated with the Red Shirt political movement that staged aggressive street protests in Bangkok in 2010 that were violently crushed by the military. From exile, they had continued propagating anti-government statements, mostly over the internet.

Thailand’s government and military have denied involvement in the the disappearances in Laos. Thailand was ruled by the military from a 2014 army coup until last year, when elections installed a government headed by the same former army commander who staged the coup and led the military regime.

A Cambodian police spokesman denied any knowledge of Wanchalearm being kidnapped and said since no abduction had taken place, no investigation would be done.

“Since this morning I have received about 50 calls asking me about this news but replying to them all the same…I said this is fake news, untrue news,” Gen. Chhay Kim Khouen said.

Human Rights Watch had called for an urgent investigation.

While some Thai dissidents managed to obtain political asylum in Western countries, others who lacked connections, documentation and funds were stuck after fleeing to Laos and Cambodia. Some tried to keep doing political work over the internet, while others preferred to keep a low profile.

All live in limbo because of the transactional nature of Thailand’s relations with its neighbors, who might regard it advantageous to hand over the fugitives.

(CANBERRA, Australia) — Thousands gathered in Australia’s capital on Friday to remind Australians that the racial inequality underscored by George Floyd’s death was not unique to the United States.

The Canberra rally that attracted 2,000 demonstrators comes before larger rallies are planned for Australia’s most populous cities on Saturday, with authorities concerned about maintaining social distancing.

“Australians have to understand that what’s been going on the United States has been happening here for a long time,” said Matilda House, an elder of the Ngambri-Ngunnawal family group who are the traditional owners of the Canberra region.

Australia had to move beyond a colonial attitude “that blacks are only here to be walked on, trodden on and murdered,” House said in the first speech of the rally.

A demonstrator who interrupted House, arguing that the rally’s focus should be on “what’s happening in the United States” rather than Australia’s colonial history, was shouted down in a heated confrontation with several protesters. The demonstrator eventually followed the crowd’s advice to leave.

The crowd was majority-white in a majority-white city. Organizers handed out masks and hand sanitizer. Most protesters attempted to keep the recommended 1.5 meters (5 feet) social distancing until the speeches began and people drew closer. Public gatherings are limited to 20 in Canberra, but police did not intervene.

One of the protesters, Wendy Brookman, a teacher and member of the Butchulla indigenous people, said Australia should not accept more than 430 indigenous Australians dying in police custody or prison in the past three decades.

“We’re not here to jump on the bandwagon of what’s happened in the United States,” Brookman said. “We’re here to voice what’s happening to our indigenous people.”

One of the protesters’ signs “I can’t breathe,” drew a parallel between Floyd’s death in Minnesota on May 25 and the Australian indigenous experience.

They were among the last words of both Floyd and Aboriginal man David Dungay, who died in a prison hospital in 2015 while being restrained by five guards.

Nigerian-born Oluwatobi Odusote, 16, and her school friends Jan Usha, 17, and Rhyse Morgan, 16, held a red, black and yellow indigenous flag during the protest.

“I thought that if America is taking a stand to save black lives, then we should help save the Aboriginal l lives here in Australia, too,” Odusote said.

Usha, who is of Nigerian and Asian background, described the rally as “great” because Australia rarely addresses racism through protest.

Morgan, who is of European heritage, said “if we’re all not equal, then no one benefits.”

Indigenous Australians are 2% of the Australian adult population but 27% of the prison population.

Australia’s indigenous people are the most disadvantaged ethnic minority in Australia. They have higher-than-average rates of infant mortality and poor health, as well as shorter life expectancy and lower levels of education and employment than other Australians.

]]>2020-06-05T00:05:03ZHow to help teach your children about activism, tolerance, morality, and violence against Black people through conversation, books and more.
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Some 20,000 people in Paris defied a ban against public gathering on Tuesday to protest the death of Adama Traoré, a black man who died at the hands of police officers in 2016. The protests were sparked after an independent probe commissioned by Traoré’s family was finally released on Tuesday; it found that his death was caused by the violent arrest by police forces.

Protesters, who also gathered in Marseille, Lyon and Lille, held up signs in English and French that read, “I can’t breathe” and “Black Lives Matter.” They called upon leaders to bring an end to police brutality. More protests are planned for Saturday, according to posts on social media.

The demonstrations go beyond solidarity with American protesters, who have been gathering since George Floyd was killed on May 25. “These protests are not just a response to what is happening in the United States. [They are] a response to Traoré, to police violence that took place during the lockdown and to the history of brutality at the hands of officers in France,” says Mathieu Rigouste, author of La Domination Policère, a 2012 book that argues current French police practices are rooted in the colonial era.

It’s no surprise that police brutality in the U.S. resonates with minorities in France, who are demanding accountability and transparency.“Today we are not just talking about the fight of the Traoré family. It’s the fight for everyone. When we fight for George Floyd, we fight for Adama Traore,” his sister, Assa said, who organized the protest.

According to a report by the independent authority in charge of human rights in France, young Arab and black men are 20 times more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts. While there are no official statistics on how many fatalities are caused by police brutality, some estimates suggest that the number has doubled in the past five years, with an average of 25 to 35 deaths a year. In 2019, the number of investigations into police violence opened by the Inspection généralede la Police National—the official police watchdog—increased by 20%.

Julien Benjamin Guillaume Mattia—Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesSigns are seen on the floor after clashes erupt following the intervention of security forces in a protest against police brutality at the Tribunal de Paris courthouse on June 2.

Although France experiences far fewer fatal police shootings compared to the United States, France has taken comparatively few steps to combat police brutality. In France, citizens can be subject to legal action if they take video footage of police officers and politicians continue to debate whether racialized policing is even a problem. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for President Emmanuel Macron’s government, Sibeth Ndiaye, said “I don’t believe we can say that France is a racist country.” She added that the United States and France are “not at all comparable … not historically, nor in the way our societies are organized.”

But many protesters and experts disagree. “Both the United States and France are societies that are capitalist, racist and patriarchal,” says Rigouste. “They are constructed around this.”

Here’s more on the current protests and the history of police brutality in France.

Who was Adama Traoré?

Adama Traoré was a French-Malian man who died in police custody on July 19, 2016 after a brutal arrest.

Traoré was out celebrating his 24th birthday with his older brother Bagui in Beaumont-sur-Oise, a town north of Paris, when both men were stopped by two undercover police officers. Traoré did not have his papers on him and was fearful officers would bring him to the station for lengthy checks, according to his family, and ran to a nearby apartment. When the three police officers entered the apartment, they say they jumped on Traoré. Although one officer says he and his colleagues only used “necessary force,” he said that the three of them had their body weight on Traoré’s back. Witnesses said Traoré did not resist the arrest. Unable to breathe properly under such pressure, Traoré said to the officers “I can’t breathe.”

By the time Traoré was put in a police car, he was fainting and urinating. While officers say they placed him in the recovery position, firefighters who were called to the station for medical assistance say they found him face-down, with no one helping him. France’s emergency medical services declared Traoré dead by 7 p.m.

It was only around 10 p.m., three hours after his death, that Traoré’s family was given the news of his death. (They say one officer had assured them he was fine, and another told them Traoré was in the hospital.) When his mother and brothers became emotional, they say police used teargas to disperse them.

Julien Mattia—GettyPeople raise their fists as they take part in a march in memory of Adama Traore, who died during his arrest by the police in July 2016, on July 22, 2017 in Beaumont-sur-Oise, northeast of Paris.

The exact circumstances surrounding Traoré’s death are the subject of an on-going battle between the French authorities and Traoré’s family and activists who allege there was a state cover up. An initial autopsyconcluded that Traoré died of a heart attack and a serious blood infection. But many, especially Traoré’s family, were skeptical of the report, given that Traoré had no preexisting medical conditions. Suspicions grew when authorities allegedly offered to send the body to Mali for a burial and to provide passports to relatives that did not have one. The family asked for a second autopsy, which found that asphyxiation was the direct cause of death. But the three doctors overseeing the investigation said the suffocation was caused by a cardiac anomaly and insisted that violence was not the cause.

Why are protests happening now?

Two days after protests erupted on May 26 in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd, the officers in France who arrested Traoré were exonerated by a medical report ordered by the judge in charge of the case. On Tuesday, June 2, an independent autopsy ordered by the family concluded that Traoré’s death was caused by arrest techniques.

Traoré’s sister Assa, a 35-year-old teacher, called for protests to take place on Tuesday in front of the courthouse of Paris’ 17th arrondissement. “What is happening in the United States has today brought to light what is happening in France,” Assa, Traoré’s sister, said to protesters. “We need to end the racism that is happening here in France.”

Julien Mattia—GettyAssa Traore (C), the elder sister of late Adama Traore, who died during his arrest by the police in July 2016, wearing a tee-shirt reading ‘Justice for Adama, without justice, you won’t have peace’ delivers a speech during a commemorative march on July 22, 2017 in Beaumont-sur-Oise, northeast of Paris.

Over 20,000 people joined the march in North-East Paris according to the police, while organizers put the number at 40,000. Protesters carried signs with “Black Lives Matter,” the names of George Floyd and Adama Traoré, and the words “I can’t breathe,” pointing to the similar technique that killed both men.

“[The protests] are a way to remind ourselves what French history rests on—colonialism and slave trade,” says Hajer, 28 year-old protester, who asked TIME to only use her first name for professional reasons. “We cannot start anew if we don’t address these problems.”

What is the history of police brutality in France?

Bertrand Guay—AFP/Getty ImagesProtesters hold placards reading “We are all George Floyd” (R) and “Racism is suffocating us” (L) during a demonstration outside the United States Embassy in Paris on June 1 after the police killing of unarmed black man George Floyd in the U.S.

There’s a long history of police brutality against France’s black and Arab populations, activists say.

Since the 1970s, activist organizations such as the Arab Workers’ Movement have called out racist forms of policing. But police abuses have continued. “There is an extension of police violence that increasingly touches everyone,” says Rigouste. “But it is used more harshly against certain populations, especially people of color and poorer populations that are segregated.”

In 2005, Bouna Traoré, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, were electrocuted when they ran into an electricity substation in a Parisian suburb after being chased by the police. A third boy, Muhittin Altun, survived but suffered major burns. The incident set off demonstrations across France, with protestors drawing attention to police brutality and inequality for people living in poorer suburbs. Vehicles and buildings were set on fire and thousands of protestors were arrested. The protests led President Jacques Chirac to call a state of emergency for the first time in 20 years. It lasted three weeks. In 2015, the officers—Sebastien Gaillemin and Stephanie Klein—were cleared of charges.

Police brutality in France has been called out by both national and international human right organizations. France was the first European Union country found to be guilty of torture by the European Courts of Human Rights in 1999 for the French police’s treatment of Ahmed Selmouni, a drug dealer who said he was beaten and sexually assaulted by police officers during questioning in 1991.

In 2009, Amnesty International warned of “a pattern of de facto impunity” among French police officers. Although France prohibits the collection of data based on ethnicity—making it difficult to identify patterns of racial profiling—the Défenseur des droits, a non-governmental French institution charged with protecting the right of citizens, released a report in 2017 that denounced practices of racial profiling. Last year, Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a “full investigation” into the excessive use of force by French police officers.

Recent cases of police violence have brought the issue into the mainstream. In 2015, Remi Fraisse, a 21-year-old white environmental activist, was killed by a grenade thrown by the National Gendarmerie while protesting the construction of a dam. When the Yellow Vest movement erupted in November 2018—and people took to the streets to express a general discontent with their decreasing living standards—police brutality resulted in the loss of 24 eyes and five hands, 315 head injuries and two deaths, according to a 2019 investigation by French journal MediaPart.

Francois Lo Presti—Getty ImagesManuel C., a “Yellow Vest” who was wounded in his left eye by a projectile likely shot by police during a “yellow vest” (gilets jaunes) demonstration on November 16, takes part alongside his wife in a march against police violence, on November 23, 2019, in the streets of Valenciennes, northern France.

In January of this year, Cedric Chouviat, a 42-year-old delivery driver died after police held him to the ground in Paris. That same month, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he expects “the greatest ethics from our police officers and gendarmes,” after asking the government to develop a proposal for how to improve the code of ethics for officers. But he added that he did not want to “harm the credibility and dignity” of officers. A few months later, on March 8, young feminist activists marching on International Women’s Day were attacked by police and dragged down steps by their hair.

For some, the latest protests suggest awareness about police brutality and racism in France is growing — and they are cautiously optimistic. “There have already been big movements that gathered a lot of people but nothing changed,” says Hajer. “What counts for me is that a lot of people who used to not come out, now are. People who did not speak up before, now speak out.”

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the situation?

The protests follow a series of violent incidents by police officers enforcing lockdown measures. France implemented a strict lockdown on March 17 to curb the spread of COVID-19. Over 160,000 police officers were deployed to ensure that the lockdown was respected. (Lockdown measures began to be eased on May 11 with some schools and businesses opening and fewer restrictions on movements.)

Videos of heavy police presence in poorer neighbourhoods and a disproportionate use of force targeting the black and Arab communities flooded social media. In one video, police officers painfully hold Sofiane Naoufel El Allaki, a 21-year-old Amazon worker, on the ground for having forgotten his mandatory lockdown release form. Naoufel El Allaki said he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result and has asked the police watchdog organization to open an investigation.

Police brutality became an even bigger topic of discussion when artist Camelia Jordana said black and Arab people are being “massacred” by police officers during lockdown on a TV show on May 23. Christophe Castaner, the French Minister of the Interior took to Twitter, calling Jordana’s words “untruthful and shameful” and a police union filed a complaint against the singer.

But Assa Traoré amplified Jordana’s message by launching #MoiAussiJ’AiPeurDevantLaPolice (I am also afraid in front of the police) on Twitter, where users shared their instances of police brutality on social media.

“It is in these forms of resistance that there is hope,” Rigouste says. “There is another society being born in this resistance.”

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(COPENHAGEN, Denmark) — Jan Egil Bakkedal had just prepared himself a sandwich when he heard a huge noise and realized that it was a landslide after which he ran out and filmed it from a nearby hill in Arctic Norway.

Bakkedal told The Associated Press on Thursday that he filmed Wednesday afternoon’s powerful landslide near the town of Alta that swept eight houses into the sea off northern Norway.

Bakkedal said he “ran for my life” into surrounding hills, and saw that one of the houses — which he owns — was washed away in the landslide.

Local police told Norwegian news agency NTB that the landslide was between 650 meters and 800 meters (2,145-2,640 feet) wide and up to 40 meters (132 feet) high.

Police spokesman Torfinn Halvari said a car was swept away in the landslide, but no one was injured. A dog that ended up in the sea was able to swim back to land and is safe, he said.

Several minor landslides followed, and nearby houses were temporarily evacuated.

The far end of the cape where the landslide occurred was Thursday closed off with Alta mayor Monica Nielsen saying that “the extent of the damage is considerable, and there’s a lot of debris.” Work was underway to ensure that the rubble doesn’t end up in shipping lanes.